Help, big time freak show

[GQuack]

Came home from running an errand, lights in the pantry, keypad, and dimmer switch all flickering. Start troubleshooting, figure I have a bad switch, replace the dimmer switch, go to link the device, all hell breaks loose.

Lights flickering all over the house, keypads flickering all over the house. Ok, this is an issue affecting everything, likely the PLM? Replace the PLM, Restore PLM, lights all over the house still flickering, keypads flickering, 1/3 of my devices can be reached, 1/3 cannot be reached (Red !), 1/3 pending writes from the Polisy. Cannot communicate messages all over the place...

What the heck is going on????

[Brian H]

Electrical feed to the home probably has issues. Electrician or power company checking maybe needed. If you don't have a meter or experience in properly and safely checking the readings yourself.

If you have any plug in lights. Do they also flicker when directly connected to the outlet and not through the module? Are any dim and others extra bright? Appliances not on Insteon acting strange?

[larryllix]

Sounds like the same old "loose neutral" on the electrical feed from the street transformer. LEDs indicate these problems better than incandescents ever did.

[MrBill]

4 hours ago, larryllix said:

Sounds like the same old "loose neutral" on the electrical feed from the street transformer. LEDs indicate these problems better than incandescents ever did.

Some LEDs.. mostly cheap LEDs show the problem better.  I diagnosed a power company issue at someone else's house and the only bulb flickering was the incandescent bulb in the furnace closet.  I looked at a couple of their LED bulbs and the stamped input voltage was 100-240v.

[Brian H]

Good information. The wide input range may definitely show less flicker.

[GQuack]

Thanks for the feedback. Going to have to figure out how I engage the electric company on this one with no actual outage to report. Hmmm.

More info - I was finally after multiple attempts, able to get most of the devices back on-line. I have 3 devices, all keypads, still with writes pending (error writing message), or unable to communicate. Haven't touched any of these guys in months or more. Now I'm wondering if the switch I replaced and / or the PLM I replaced were not in fact bad. How do I tell a bad PLM in this scenario? Don't want to give up on this one given they are now worth their weight in gold.

Edited October 7, 2022 by GQuack

[MrBill]

14 hours ago, GQuack said:

Thanks for the feedback. Going to have to figure out how I engage the electric company on this one with no actual outage to report. Hmmm.

Just call them and tell them you have flickering lights.  It's a routine call for them.  They will check the connection at the pole and meter, and likely come to do that within a few hours of your call.   Its  common that a loose connection will cause an unsteady high resistance arcing connection that causes lights to flicker.  If an incandescent bulb is flickering brighter when a 240v load such as an electric oven or air conditioning compressor kicks on it's an indication that the above described issue is occurring on the service neutral which is more problematic and needs to be dealt with before it ultimately burns open.

[larryllix]

32 minutes ago, MrBill said:

Just call them and tell them you have flickering lights.  It's a routine call for them.  They will check the connection at the pole and meter, and likely come to do that within a few hours of your call.   Its  common that a loose connection will cause an unsteady high resistance arcing connection that causes lights to flicker.  If an incandescent bulb is flickering brighter when a 240v load such as an electric oven or air conditioning compressor kicks on it's an indication that the above described issue is occurring on the service neutral which is more problematic and needs to be dealt with before it ultimately burns open.

Actually it is the opposite of that. When a 240 load is applied, it will not affect a loose neutral. If a loose phase is happening the 240 load will reduce the voltage across one or both phases and lights will dim but never brighten.

With a bad neutral 240 volt loads are not affected, only the 120 volt loads. 120 volt loads can cause the other phase conductor to increase voltage as the bad neutral cannot maintain it's voltage position in the centre (split)  of the 240 volt.

The result and fix is the same, regardless. Your electrical supply company needs to be alerted to investigate this. It may end up being your problem, depending where the onus is divided. Ours was always at the meter base and the wiring from the meter  base to the main switch and panel was the customer's problem. Some nice utility worker may follow up and do you a favour, in that case. Otherwise it will be an electrician call and $$$.

[MrBill]

2 minutes ago, larryllix said:

With a bad neutral 240 volt loads are not affected, only the 120 volt loads. 120 volt loads can cause the other phase conductor to increase voltage as the bad neutral cannot maintain it's voltage position in the centre (split)  of the 240 volt.

Read it again Larry....

42 minutes ago, MrBill said:

If an incandescent bulb is flickering brighter when a 240v load such as an electric oven or air conditioning compressor kicks on it's an indication that the above described issue is occurring on the service neutral which is more problematic and needs to be dealt with before it ultimately burns open.

The incandescent bulb is a 120V load, it it flickers BRIGHTER when a 240V load is turned on then the problem is the service neutral.

[larryllix]

12 minutes ago, MrBill said:

Read it again Larry....

The incandescent bulb is a 120V load, it it flickers BRIGHTER when a 240V load is turned on then the problem is the service neutral.

Nonsense. A 120 volt bulb is connected to the neutral and could cause brightening. A 240 volt load is not connected to the neutral and does not involve the neutral connection or capability. Brightening only happens when a load connected to neutral and the opposite phase is applied.

Edited October 8, 2022 by larryllix

[MrBill]

44 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Nonsense. A 120 volt bulb is connected to the neutral and could cause brightening. A 240 volt load is not connected to the neutral and does not involve the neutral connection or capability. Brightening only happens when a load connected to neutral and the opposite phase is applied.

What happens when service neutral drops completely?  I don't know how it works in Canada, but in the US Neutral is center tapped, one side of the line goes high and the other side goes low with respect to ground based on the amount of 240 volt loads present.  When in the connection is intermittent (flickering) and flickering brighter it means the voltage has increased.

[larryllix]

36 minutes ago, MrBill said:

What happens when service neutral drops completely?  I don't know how it works in Canada, but in the US Neutral is center tapped, one side of the line goes high and the other side goes low with respect to ground based on the amount of 240 volt loads present.  When in the connection is intermittent (flickering) and flickering brighter it means the voltage has increased.

Correct but....

240 volt loads are not connected, and cannot affect, the Neutral. Yes, with a bad neutral, the two 120 voltages can vary up and down, float between 0 and 240 volts (load dependent) but loads can only affect voltages and lines they are connected to.

The bright flashes are caused by 120 volt loads on the opposite phase / leg causing the neutral to be "off-centre".

I always think of it as two ridgid but bendy posts, each with spring to the centre (neutral). Too much pull on the common centre point moves the centre point over towards one post. Now one is shorter (low voltage) and one is longer (higher voltage). With a good neutral connection the springs are more reinforced and ridgid. Of course the ground wiring helps the rigidity and complicates finding it when the neutral is intermittent or missing. Has it rained lately? Then along came plastic plumbing and water meter techs disconnecting the jumper around the plastic meters.

[GQuack]

This is all good stuff. Let me add one more tidbit of info. I noticed at the same time this was going on, an anomaly with our solar system. The only relationship our solar system has is a SolarEdge Node server in the Polisy which provides nothing but info. But, I noticed from the monitoring app, a big gap in the self consumption graph plus a big consumption spike in the middle of it, screen shot is attached. We weren’t even home during most of this,so it was nothing we were doing. How does this add, or not, to the discussion?

[larryllix]

2 hours ago, GQuack said:

This is all good stuff. Let me add one more tidbit of info. I noticed at the same time this was going on, an anomaly with our solar system. The only relationship our solar system has is a SolarEdge Node server in the Polisy which provides nothing but info. But, I noticed from the monitoring app, a big gap in the self consumption graph plus a big consumption spike in the middle of it, screen shot is attached. We weren’t even home during most of this,so it was nothing we were doing. How does this add, or not, to the discussion?

Oh yeah. Does your PV system have a flip over when the grid fails? Does it disconnect from co-generating when the grid fails?

I can't imagine any other way you could have it set up so in either case you have a relay/contactor with a fail-safe contact that will either close or open and sitting there 24x7 and not doing much collects dust without ever "wiping".
Good contact design makes contact metals touch before the armature is fully pulled into the armature/coil. Now when the last bit of motion is happening, the contact either rolls across the surface of the flat metal surface or gets dragged a bit, either way, "wiping" the dust and/or oxide off the electrical connection surfaces.
When they sit idle for months and years without occasional wiping they can accumulate dust etc. and that can burn when seeig an electrical arc and now you have high resistance carbon between your contacts.

AS a wild shot in the dark can you turn breakers on and off to cause the system to operate whichever way it is set up? Don't do it too rapidly but several times. Then see if this improves.

[MrBill]

3 hours ago, larryllix said:

float between 0 and 240 volts (load dependent) but loads can only affect voltages and lines they are connected to.

this is exactly what happens and yes an incandescent bulb on the side of the line that float higher will flicker brighter.

been there,  done that. seen it first in my parents house when I was a teen.  Seen it in customers houses repeatedly... 

[larryllix]

21 minutes ago, MrBill said:

this is exactly what happens and yes an incandescent bulb on the side of the line that float higher will flicker brighter.

been there,  done that. seen it first in my parents house when I was a teen.  Seen it in customers houses repeatedly... 

Loose neutral connections one of the most common service calls for electrical utility service trucks. We got about 5-10 per week. Many problems at the aluminum to copper wiring connections exposed to weather outside the homes.

[GQuack]

Thanks all for the comments, calling the power company tomorrow. If they do in fact find a wiring issue, I’m going to reimplement the previous PLM. Been a weird few days, lights turning on or off by themselves, etc. @larryllixto your comments concerning the solar system, the solar system is not used as our power backup, we have a generator for that which kicks on automatically within 30 seconds after detecting an outage. I have no indication from the generator app, or the UPS on my house server that we actually lost power. Something happened during that period, no idea what.

[GQuack]

Hi all, wanted to circle back on this now having come out the other end and for whatever help my experience may bring someone else.

Power company and electrician were out - no wiring issues found. Ultimately came down to what I believe was a PLM failure over a matter of hours from the time I first saw the lights and keypads flickering to replacing and restoring the PLM. Given the PLM was closing in on 3 years of service, that time period is consistent in terms of failure with all other comments I have seen from others unfortunately. Guess I may soon embark on a journey of repair on the bad PLM to make sure I have backups at the ready given no indication on what is going to happen with the new Insteon team.

Even after restoring the PLM which took some hours and multiple attempts to get through, I still had 3 keypads which showed either pending writes or were unreachable by the ISY yet had varying degrees of ability to communicate with their connected devices / scenes from not at all to working correctly. For each of those 3 devices, my chosen path of action was to delete the keypad, re-link the keypad and then setup each keypad as it was previously. That process worked successfully. I also found I had a smattering of other devices, IO Lincs primarily that were exhibiting inconsistent behavior. I followed the same path, with deleting and re-adding those, also successfully.

Knock on wood, happy to say I think this exercise is over and all is working correctly. I appreciate all comments from others and am always happy to learn new things and remain impressed with the knowledge and willingness to help shown on this forum.

[kclenden]

4 hours ago, GQuack said:

Power company and electrician were out - no wiring issues found. Ultimately came down to what I believe was a PLM failure over a matter of hours from the time I first saw the lights and keypads flickering to replacing and restoring the PLM.

Given all the symptoms you've reported, I'm not convinced the PLM was the source of your flickering problem.  I'm more likely to think it was a victim of the whatever event caused the flickering.

The PLM doesn't control the power going to each device.  It can only send messages to the devices instructing them to perform an action for which they have been programed.  Perhaps the PLM was flooding the powerline with messages and that somehow caused flickering, but... if that was the case then when you removed the PLM and replaced it with another, the flickering should have stopped.

It seems like your timeline is something like:

• Came home and lights in pantry, keypad and dimmer switch were flickering, but no other lights or switches were flickering
• Replaced dimmer switch and tried to link it to Polisy
• All hell breaks loose and now all lights, keypads, and switches in the house are flickering

If that's an accurate summation, some more information would be helpful:

• Were the lights in the pantry, keypad and dimmer switch all on the same electrical circuit?
• After shutting off the power to replace the dimmer switch, installing the new switch, and turning the power back on, were the pantry lights flickering?  Was the keypad flickering?  Was the new switch flickering?
• Once the flickering throughout the house started, did it continue non-stop?  Was it flickering when the power company and/or the electrician game out?

[larryllix]

41 minutes ago, kclenden said:

Given all the symptoms you've reported, I'm not convinced the PLM was the source of your flickering problem.  I'm more likely to think it was a victim of the whatever event caused the flickering.

The PLM doesn't control the power going to each device.  It can only send messages to the devices instructing them to perform an action for which they have been programed.  Perhaps the PLM was flooding the powerline with messages and that somehow caused flickering, but... if that was the case then when you removed the PLM and replaced it with another, the flickering should have stopped.

It seems like your timeline is something like:

• Came home and lights in pantry, keypad and dimmer switch were flickering, but no other lights or switches were flickering
• Replaced dimmer switch and tried to link it to Polisy
• All hell breaks loose and now all lights, keypads, and switches in the house are flickering

If that's an accurate summation, some more information would be helpful:

• Were the lights in the pantry, keypad and dimmer switch all on the same electrical circuit?
• After shutting off the power to replace the dimmer switch, installing the new switch, and turning the power back on, were the pantry lights flickering?  Was the keypad flickering?  Was the new switch flickering?
• Once the flickering throughout the house started, did it continue non-stop?  Was it flickering when the power company and/or the electrician game out?

Have to agree. Insteon would not be a fast enough protocol to cause fast flickering in even one device...slow blinking on and off...sure.

[GQuack]

@larryllixhere is what I remember, your summary is mostly correct. 

• Came home and lights in pantry, keypad and dimmer switch were flickering, but no other lights or switches were flickering (Yes, I do not recall any other lights or keypads flickering)
• Replaced dimmer switch and tried to link it to Polisy (I have two switches in the pantry, a dimmer and an 8 button keypad. The decision as to which device to replace was easy, don't have an extra 8-button, did have an extra dimmer, replace the dimmer first)
• All hell breaks loose and now all lights, keypads, and switches in the house are flickering (While I was in the process of replacing the dimmer, all the other lights and keypads also started to flicker, I think. After replacing the dimmer, I then went to admin console on the Polisy to link the new dimmer and had error messages pop up that every device in the house was unable to communicate)
• Next
• Were the lights in the pantry, keypad and dimmer switch all on the same electrical circuit? (Yes, I believe so)
• After shutting off the power to replace the dimmer switch, installing the new switch, and turning the power back on, were the pantry lights flickering?  Was the keypad flickering?  Was the new switch flickering? (I never turned off the power, removed the old switch hot, rewired the new switch hot. I know, I know, I know, don't beat me up. As I remember, at this point, all lights and keypads in the house were flickering. When I saw the the error messages for every other device in the house, I decided to replace the PLM. I remember very distinctly as that process was underway, when the event viewer displayed a write message, the lights in the room where the computer are, also flickered along with the write. It took multiple iterations to get through the PLM restore to the point where almost all the devices were at least reachable by the Polisy)
• Once the flickering throughout the house started, did it continue non-stop?  Was it flickering when the power company and/or the electrician game out? (The flickering continued until the PLM restore was completely done, no flickering since then, including when the power company and electrician came out.)

[larryllix]

8 hours ago, GQuack said:

@larryllixhere is what I remember, your summary is mostly correct. 

That would be @kclenden